Beautiful Unexpected Surprises
This Friday, Lillian & I will release our new album, “Knowing Venture — tour version.” It was recorded by our friends Noah Twombley, Samuel Schmidt, and Lleyton Brainard in Noah’s living room at the end of our touring season this past February. I remember it was incredibly cold that day, but the warmth in the room was visceral. Samuel brewed us some wonderful pour-overs and we all prepared to start recording the tour-vetted versions of Knowing Venture.
Lillian & I were both confident. We’d never recorded a live album, but we’d put in the work and knew how to do our thing. We were so excited to share how the songs changed and changed us with the friends who helped us make them in the first place. Nervousness was there too—but ultimately we had peace. We could only do our darndest and let our performance be grounded in love. Plus, we really never played a perfect tour set either, so it was almost exciting to see how our mistakes could make it in these live versions.
Mistakes aren’t even really mistakes when the objective isn’t mechanized musical perfection. They’re kinda like freckles or film grain or rain or losing your keys. Beautiful unexpected surprises. Our objective in “Knowing Venture — tour version” was to capture the era we lived through: two cosmic lil guys, jamming in living rooms around the country, hoping to bless our old and new friends.
One of the most obvious ways Real Face blessed people on tour was through Lillian. The saxophone was a beautiful unexpected surprise in the Real Face-verse. Something you may not have guessed is that saxophone was never Lillian’s first love.
She’s actually more into being a mom, doodling, and just being amidst a room. Doing music with me was Lillian graciously testing a hypothesis I had that we could be a killer duo. And we were! But after a year of shredding, it still just wasn’t the thing she loved. She didn’t dream about playing shows and writing new saxophone parts. She dreams about doing little crafts and writing nice cards to the people she loves. Because of this, “Knowing Venture — tour version” is Lillian’s graduation from Real Face. She passed with flying colors. Now she gets to pour her energy into things she loves more.
Here’s to us all doing the things we love more; to making mistakes; to experiencing the warmth of friends; to inviting beautiful unexpected surprises; to having different dreams; to blasting Real Face’s new live record this Friday.
This Knowing Venture is almost complete.
